


The Birth of Inspector Gadget

by Flakingnapstich



Category: Inspector Gadget - Fandom
Genre: Body Horror, Coma, Cyborgs, Hostage Situations, Law Enforcement, Mecha, Missing Body, Nanotechnology, Revenge, Terrorism, flying car, trap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flakingnapstich/pseuds/Flakingnapstich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penny's parents are in a coma, the victims of a terrorist attack on their lab. Her uncle, their bodyguard has been declared brain dead, his body on life support. General Quimby, the chief liaison between her family's laboratory and their lucrative military contracts has a plan that might just give them the edge they need to take on the terrorists. Will it work? Are the rough prototypes left behind by the raiding terrorists enough to build a new weapon? What does the terrorist leader, Dr. Claw really want?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Birth of Inspector Gadget

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sageofchaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageofchaos/gifts).



Inspector Gadget

# The Hospital

  
Penny stared at the man on the hospital bed. She'd been in her current position for over an hour. Her fists clenched so tightly that her arms were vibrating with a marginally contained rage. The nurses walking past the room had begun to call her the "Atom Bomb, as she looked ready to explode. The room's television was tuned to "Headline News." As was usual, the half hour news show continually aired focused on the top two or three stories of the day. In theory the segments would be updated as new facts came to light. Today it was focused on a terrorist attack that had destroyed a privately owned laboratory.  
  
An perky blond news anchor was speaking. "... known for extensive neurological research. Protesters had accused the lab of 'playing god' by melding man and machine. Several religious groups had attempted, unsuccessfully, to use the courts to shut down the lab for its experiments on melding humans and computers."  
  
"That's right Janet," a perky brunette reporter said. "Despite the overtones of some of the lab's military research, it's still the leading facility on the development of artificial replacement limbs. Here we have a video of Dr Summer showing off one of the most contested research projects."  
  
The screen showed a mixed breed dog walking on a balance beam.  
  
"Ah, yes," the other anchor responded. "'Brain' as he's known, was the first large mammal subjected to a nanite technology designed to increase intelligence and allow for brain / computer interfaces. The goal of 'Project Brain' was both public relations and a dog that Dr. Summer described as, well, let's cut to the clip."  
  
The screen returned to the dog, who walked past a smiling man in a lab coat. "As we learned, true human level intelligence isn't feasible, yet, but we have been able to make Brian here as smart as Lassie was portrayed on television and in movies. Remember, no real dog was ever as smart as those television dogs, at least not until Brain came along."  
  
Penny was only dimly aware of the television. She was focused on the pure rage that radiated from her core like the heat from a sun's innermost fusion furnace. She started and swore when a man cleared his throat from the doorway.  
  
"Ms. Summer," The man said.  
  
Penny relaxed a bit when she recognized the man. "General Quimby," she replied, a combination of tension and exhaustion in her voice.  
  
"I just got back from visiting your parents," he said. "But I'm not family, so they can't tell me-"  
  
"Dad's coma is from physical trauma. They don't know if he'll wake up. Dr. Adams from the lab is being brought in to consult on using Dad's nanite technology to replace damaged neurons. Mom's coma is medically induced. She's being observed. They may operate in the next few hours."  
  
A moment of silence passed between them.  
  
"What about the others?"  
  
Quimby handed her a folder. She smiled a little as she took it. "Dead tree?" she said before opening it.  
  
"No joke about me being a dinosaur?" he asked.  
  
Penny frowned, "Not today."  
  
They were both silent as she read the casualty list.  
  
"Who did this?" she eventually asked.  
  
"We're pretty sure it was Claw."  
  
"Seriously? That Bond Flick reject managed to pull this off?"  
  
"Your parents took him seriously, as did your uncle." Quimby motioned to the man on the bed.  
  
"It's just," Penny started, "Claw of all people taking down my Uncle."  
  
Quimby chuckled. "I know. If Comic books were real he'd have been an agent for S.H.I.E.L.D., but like in comic books, and inside job can bring down even the best."  
  
Penny closed her eyes and started trying to control her breathing. Brain, her service dog, gently took her left hand in his mouth and lead to her a chair.  
  
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Quimby said.  
  
"Shoot the inside man."  
  
"Or woman," Quimby said. That's the problem. Based on the trails we're following, Claw either bribed almost every manager or worked hard to frame as many as he could."  
  
"I see," Penny said, "He wanted to keep the lab in disarray after his attack, make sure the was no clear line of succession once my parents were out of the way."  
  
"At least they outsmarted him on that score."  
  
"A legally emancipated daughter who inherits the privately owned lab is a cold comfort."  
  
"It means you're in charge of the lab Penny."  
  
Penny frowned. 16 was awfully young to be in charge of a major cybernetic and neurology research facility and she was feeling it acutely.  
  
"We need something from you," Quimby said.  
  
"The lab," Penny said, "Will do anything it can to bring down Claw."  
  
"The Murphy initiative," Quimby said, looking at the patient in the bed.  
  
The white hot core of hatred in Penny's gut welled up again, only now instead of radiating outward it was directed in her mind's eye at Dr. Claw. Mentally, a bean of white hot heat was disintegrating her image of the terrorist for hire. If psychic powers had been real a ball of pure malice would have risen from her body to find and disintegrate Dr. Claw.  
  
Quimby pressed on. "Don signed up for this. I was notified when he was declared brain dead, and Dr. Adams is willing to evaluate Don's condition after he's done with your Father, assuming you give the OK."  
  
Penny was motionless again, staring at her uncle.  
  
"It's your lab now," Quimby said. "We can't proceed without your John Hancock. We need Don, we need whatever your lab can give us of him. He's fought Claw's organization before. He's the reason Claw spent five years in a french prison before the breakout. His mind plus your Mother's cybernetic technology-"  
  
"Would make the fictional Robocop look like a kid in a tinfoil suit of armor."  
  
"Exactly." Quimby said.  
  
Penny walked over to her uncle. There wasn't much left of him that wasn't charred or full of tubes and wires. She rested a hand on the bed where his left hand should have been.  
  
"Brain" she said, "Book."  
  
Brain stuck his head into her book bag and came out holding what looked like a battered hardcover book in his mouth. He walked over to her and held it up. She took it and patted his head. She stared at her uncle for a few more minutes before opening the book. Inside was a computer screen using a display system of her own design. The interface was convoluted to one unfamiliar with it's nuances, designed as much to discourage causal users as to optimize Penny's use of the hardware. After a few moments with her stylus and the virtual keyboard she closed the book, tuned to General Quimby and said with forced calm and professionalism, "It's done. It's authorized. Uncle Don will be the first volunteer for the Murphy Intia-"  
  
She didn't fish the word. Her voice cracked, and with it the mental barriers of determination and rage she'd been erecting. In a flash, Penny the professional was washed away in a flood of emotion. She was not the cool, calm and collected heir to a medical and military powerhouse, but a terrified 16 year old girl whose family had just been lost. She closed her eyes tight and fell to her knees, rocking with the computer book clutched to her chest. Brain was at her side, trying to calm her. She heard General Quimby offering her a glass of water. Her last thought before succumbing to the seizure was wonder at how she'd managed to stave it off for so long, given what she'd been through in the last few hours.  
  


# Don Thinks Again

  
It was a strange experience. He was self-aware, or at least he thought he was. Sparks and fragments of memory spilled through his consciousness as the fragments of his brain that contained them were reattached. He knew this is what was happening, because he'd been told so by his niece Penny, and every other doctor who came within earshot of him.  
  
Don wondered if he was the real Don, or something made from him. A memory floated through his mind, a line from an old science fiction book he’d read as a youth. An astronaut was being "unspooled" or something similar, everything he was unraveled to make a super-being, a star baby out of what he had been. Did that astronaut die in the process, killed to become raw material for a proto-god, or was he evolved and advanced? The book didn't answer the question, and Don, or what was made from Don, wished it had.  
  
Don wondered if the memory of the book was his, or one of the implanted memories they'd told him he was going to get as part of training to use his new cybernetic parts.  
  
He thought back to a recent conversation. He’d been discussing this very question of identity, of self, with some of the staff. The debate had drifted off on a tangent about if he had been rebooted as a philosopher, seeking questions, or an investigator, seeking answers. The consensus had been his police and military background meant he was probing everything, examining the limits not just of his new body, but of his new self. That night he earned the nickname of “The Inspector.”  
  
Don was snapped out of his thoughts by arguing nearby.  There was often arguing, usually about his new parts. His brother-in-law had done and excellent job training his staff in the ins and outs of his neurological wizardry, so there was surprisingly little disagreement about how to rebuild his rebooted brain, but the terrorist attack had deprived the Lab of it's best equipment, so the best parts and the hardware to replace them were not available.  
  
"A bubble wand?" he heard Penny say.  
  
"It was part of the prototype so we could refine the mist and spray nozzle," Doctor Trish was saying. "We were using bubble solution because it had the target viscosity."  
  
"But a bubble wand?"  
  
"It let us test, er, something," a second,  apologetic voice said.  
  
"Fine" Penny barked, "Do what you have to do. If that's the atomizer we have available for the non-lethal chemical defenses then that's what we'll use."  
  
"Jake has some good news."  
  
"God I hope so," Penny said.  
  
Jake chirped up. "I got the balance right for the improvised leg suspension."  
  
Don could hear his niece perking up, a world of relief, interest and excitement in the following "really?"  
  
"I re-purposed the hydraulics from a racing suspension."  
  
"You're replacing my uncle's femurs with car parts?"  
  
Don chuckled.  
  
"Well, The Inspector likes the idea!" Jake said.  
  
"I hope so," another doctor said, "You cannibalized his car for the parts."  
  
Don opened his eyes and looked at Penny. He smiled. "I'm not just going to surprise them" he said, "They’re going to need a good 10 seconds to figure out if what they saw was what they really saw. Some of this kit is going to be as good as a stun gun for all the shock it'll cause."  
  
Penny smiled back. "Wait'll you see what Dr. Trish has in mind for your left tibia."  
  
He heard a voice in the distance, "I still think I can finish the prehensile coccyx in time!"  
  
Don felt a pang of concern. "What did he just say?"  
  


# Penny in Danger

  
Penny’s progress through the parking lot was quick and efficient, guided by the half dozen military bodyguards that had been assigned to her. It was the new “normal” and  a situation she had to accept. Her family's laboratory had been attacked once by a well-armed terrorist organization, and since the research had resumed with only a few weeks delay, it was likely to happen again. The best hardware was stolen and would take another few months to rebuild, but the research continued unabated. The laboratory was still as attractive a target as it had been before, a treasure trove for the conquest minded. A warlord's version of Aladdin’s Cave.  
  
All around her radios chirped and guards watched carefully. The laboratory's upgraded security system watched her every move through the parking lot, sending feeds both internally and to Quimby’s security office. It was somehow comforting to Penny to know two separate security departments were watching out for her. It was one thing to be a target, quite another to know just how many fully automatic machine gun wielded by heavily armored personnel were watching her back. Just the other day Quimby had mentioned how she had a larger security detail than he did. Tonight however, Penny’s mind was relaxed and clear. The setbacks of the last few weeks were soon to be behind her. Her mind briefly drifted back to a conversation with Uncle Don.  
  
“It’s like I know there are parts missing, but I’m not sure WHAT they are,” he had said.  
  
“Tell me more,” she had asked, holding his hand and worrying at his thumbnail the way she had since she was an infant.  
  
“Body language,” he began. “I remember looking at an opponent and predicting their next combat move. It sometimes seemed like I knew what the other guy was going to do before he did. Now almost every hand to hand combat catches me flat footed. I KNOW I have the instincts but they’re still locked away in some corner of my brain that’s either still disconnected from the main, or destroyed completely.”  
  
Penny was worried. She REALLY needed her parents, but they were still both in comas. Penny was the computer wiz. Neurology and cybernetics were her parents domain. “What else?” She had asked.  
  
“Sometimes if feels like there’s two brains inside my skull. One controls my body and the other does the thinking. Most of the time the two are in sync, but sometimes the body brain runs off and does something stupid while the thinking brain screams at it to shut up and pull back.”  
  
“Is that what happened in the last training session?”  
  
“I think so. Do you ever have a moment where you think of something and discard it because it was a really stupid idea?”  
  
“All the time.”  
  
“It’s like that, only instead of discarding the idea, part of my brain runs off and does it.”  
  
“I’ll have the neurology team review stroke data.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Stroke victims can lose their mental filter, saying every random thing that comes to mind. It sounds like, your internal filters are still rebuilding. The nanites aren't done building those connections yet.”  
  
Penny was shocked back into the present by an explosion that sounded close. Her guards surrounded her and pulled her down behind the nearest vehicle. Brain crouched by her side and growled in the direction of the noise.  
  
Penny knew it would take something big and bad to interrupt her daily trip from the laboratory to her home. She’d expected something sooner or later. A fleet of armored vehicles, a dirty bomb, even four dozen ninjas would have been less of a surprise than what she saw approaching across the parking lot, smashing cars and throwing them aside like they were made of tissue paper. At least a dozen lumbering bipeds were approaching, each of them easily seven feet tall. Their limbs were long and unwieldy, some of them firing projectiles into the cars between her and them, others firing a beam weapon Penny recognized as one of her family’s own prototypes.  
  
“Claw,” she growled. He was back, and his troops were armed with her own hardware now.  
  
The soldiers around her were scrambling. Orders were barked, and Penny soon found herself being ushered back towards the laboratory. Their progress was halted however when four more heavily armed entities landed behind her, accompanied by the noise, light and heat of rocket packs. For a moment she thought the flame belching packs were merely inefficient, but then the acrid smoke they produced hit her. Her eyes watered and lungs coughed. This wasn’t mere transport, but a weapon to disorient anyone unlucky enough to be near a landing.  
  
The gunfire started.  
  
Her guards fell quickly, screaming in agony from massive wounds to their legs and arms. The bipeds, Claw’s soldiers marched ahead, either unphased by the weapons being fired at them, or just good at pretending they weren’t injured. Penny drew her own sidearm and began firing at the nearest biped, trying joints and anything that glittered like it might be glass. Her attack was cut short by a cacophony of strobe lights from multiple enemies. For a brief, shining moment she thought the interlacing patterns might let her escape without a seizure, but already Brian was bracing against her, supporting her as she fell. She thought briefly of the experimental goggles her Father had been working on before the first attack, the ones that would intercept seizure triggering light patterns and keep them from her eyes, but they were in the lab, unfinished. Penny fell, succumbing to the seizure.  
  


# Penny’s Doctor Appointment

  
Penny’s head was throbbing when she woke up. She was drained and exhausted, the way she generally was after a major seizure. She still had her eyes closed. She eased herself up on her hands and knees, feeling a cold, hard surface beneath her. Her mind raced. She pieced together her most recent memories. The attack, the death, the blood, and finally the weaponized lights, the proof she was specifically targeted. While not the only epileptic in the lab, she was the only optically triggered one.  
  
“Where’s Brain?” she thought. “Why did I pass out?”  
  
She opened her eyes, and saw a dark, gray, concrete floor beneath her. As the throbbing pain in her head subsided a little she became aware of other sensations. The chill air stuck her first, but it wasn’t until she opened her eyes and saw her bare arms that it registered that she was wearing only her bra and panties. She straightened with a start and looked around. She was surrounded by bars, beyond which was a dark, indiscernible void. She had the impression that she was a lonely crate in the middle of a massive, empty, unlit warehouse.  
  
The whirr of servos kicked her panic up a notch. She turned towards the noise and saw a head rising from below the edge of her cage. It looked like it was emerging from the floor just beyond the bars, but once her eyes focused she realized her cage must be on a pedestal or shelf of some kind, and the figure beyond was merely standing up, or rising on a platform.  
  
The head was inside a clear shell, a helmet of some kind with a backing criss-crossed with circuits. It reminded her of an astronaut’s helmet. As the figure stood she saw that the helmet was part of a larger suit of armor, a battlemech or cyborg of some kind, worn by whoever was rising to greet her. The head in the helmet was still attached to a neck, so she assumed there was a torso in there as well, but wires also ran from various points on the skull. Some ran below the neckline and others attached directly to the circuits behind the head.  
  
“Who are you supposed to be?” she asked the figure.  
  
“Why Penny, don’t you recognize me? I worked with your Father for a good six months!”  
  
“What do you want Claw?”  
  
“That’s ‘Doctor’ claw young lady, and what do you think I want?”  
  
Penny thought for a moment, weighing her next words. she decided to go with the obvious. “What have you done to me?”  
  
“Gassed you, caught you, stripped you. Don’t worry, we didn't do anything ungentlemanly while you were out.  
  
“There are some things a girl can tell,” she said.  
  
Dr. Claw laughed. He finished standing and Penny could now see his suit made him at least eight feet tall, possibly more depending on how much of him was below the edge of her cage.  
  
“Ransomed or slave?” she asked, remembering the Mexican telecommunications engineers who are periodically kidnapped to become forced labor for drug cartel communications darknets.  
  
“Bait.”  
  
“You WANT the army to blow you up?”  
  
“I want your uncle to come rescue you,” he said. “My sources in the hospital told me you woke him up. You brought back a dead man, and whatever is in his skull is worth more than all the precious cybernetics I stole. It’s one thing to replace my deformed parts with superior hardware, but enhancing my MIND, that would be a true evolution.”  
  
Penny was standing now. She was still wobbly. “What makes you think-”  
  
“We saw the test flights,” Claw said flatly. “Don’t lie to me about him being a lab rat or invalid. He has a set of helicopter blades that pop out of his back.”  
  
“Nanites,” Penny whispered.  
  
“I already guessed your precious uncle was laced with your Father’s nanites. How else would you rebuild his brain enough for implants like that? He HAS to have some kind of control mechanism and if I can replicate that I can integrate my new hardware even more tightly with my mind and reflexes.”  
  
“That’s still just a suit, isn’t it?”  
  
“Shut up little girl, It’s more than a suit. I move my arm, and the suit moves. I have the mechanics bound to my own brain. I still need controls to run the jets, the guns and all the other hardware though. You’ve managed to integrate NEW sensors, NEW limbs into your uncle’s mind, and that’s the technology I want.”  
  
Penny was thinking. “We underestimated you,” she said out loud. Dr Claw laughed, and started bragging about how well he’d outsmarted everyone. In a way, he was right. “We thought he only wanted the cybernetics,” Penny thought. “The nanites are on his list too. He ALREADY knows how to use them to some extent, that’s got to be how he fused his mind to the robot arms and legs.”  
  
“Nanites,” she whispered.  
  
Her gaze had drifted as she thought, but now she turned her eyes back to Dr. Claw, focusing on his with all her attention. “You didn’t want my parents dead, did you?”  
  
“Now why would you say that?”  
  
“You killed guards, but only two researchers. My parents are in comas, but there’s no medical reason WHY they haven’t woken up.”  
  
Claw was smirking. Penny was thinking. Introducing neural nanites into her parents was still deemed too risky, too dangerous, but what if nanites were already there, having either severed connections they would restore after some external command, or merely blocking neural activity, keeping her parents unconscious? What if Claw knew enough about nanites to disable a brain but not kill?  
  
Dr Claw spoke, “Why would I kill the golden goose? When they wake up they can go back to their research, building more things for me to steal. It’s a parasitic relationship, I know, but I’m comfortable with it.”  
  
“When will they wake up?”  
  
Dr. Claw smirked again. It was a wild, lopsided smirk. Portions of his face had become paralyzed since she last saw him, but not in a pattern that seemed consistent with a stroke or other normal injury. Penny shuddered, thinking that if this was an indication of his skill with nanites, her parents may never wake up, or never be themselves again if they did.  
  
“What happens now?” She said.  
  
“You still have your bracelet,” Dr. Claw said. “When we move you, you’ll be outside the faraday cage. The tracking signal along with your vital statistics will bounce off a few satellites to your family lab and the posse will be dispatched. I want to observe your minions in panic mode a bit longer though, so for now, we keep you quiet. Blindingly quiet.”  Claw placed a special emphasis on the word “Blindingly” and as he said it a bank of lights on the front of his suit began to flash in a strobe pattern. Penny fell down, hitting the concrete floor hard, caught unawares, unprotected and unaided by Brain. The sound of Dr Claw’s laughter punched through the pain and terror of the seizure adding a hallucinogenic edge. She’d never heard anyone laughing when she seized before, and for a few moments she was convinced she’d died and gone to Hell, and the mocking voice was a devil preparing her next torment.

# Klaxons

Penny was roused from her fitful sleep by the ground beneath her rumbling. She stood on shaky legs and braced herself against the bars. At first she thought the distant movement was the room sinking, but the sickening lurch in her stomach told her she was actually rising. Her cage had been on an elevator this entire time. A grinding noise above her head attracted her attention. She looked up and saw a sliver of starlight. the roof was opening. She looked at her medical bracelet. The battery was dangerously low, but but still had enough juice left to send a few blasts of data.  
  
“Showtime” she thought. “They’re ready to spring the trap.” She watched the sliver of light widen and began stretching her arms and legs, trying to work out the kinks and stiff muscles. In a few minutes the roof was open and Penny had been elevated above it, the wind cutting through her skin, the cotton of her underwear offering nothing but token protection.  
  
Two security centers and one medical emergency division received the alert simultaneously.  
  
The lab was alive with sirens. The classic blinking lights of a klaxon were absent, a concession to Penny’s epilepsy. Don, The Inspector, Was running down a hallway, half a dozen people streaming behind him.  
  
“Just put the coat on,” one of them said.  
  
“It’s not a cold night,” Don said.  
  
“You still have some odd lumps we haven’t worked out yet,” Another scientist said. You’ll bend in better-”  
  
“In a big gray trench coat?” Don said.  
  
“Would you rather they see the chinks in the body armor?” a woman said. It was Doctor Trish. “The overlapping scales won’t be ready for another week. If we can’t shield you properly we can at least hide the-”  
  
“Right,” Don said, snagging the coat from the woman carrying it, “THAT made sense Doctor.”  
  
The woman smirked at the man who’d made the “odd lumps” argument.”  
  
The trench coat was the closest he was going to get to a uniform at the moment. Then he had one of his split moments. One part of his brain was watching where they were going, noting he was walking into the garage. The other part of his brain was in showboat mode, sweeping the trench coat on as he walked through the door in a wide, dramatic gesture. The sensible part of his brain thought the gesture looked absurd, but the uncensored part, the troublesome part, thought it looked smashing.  
  
“Smashing?” Don thought. “Why the Hell would I even THINK that word?”  
  
“I’m not Don,” the other part though, in an apparent effort to annoy the sensible part of the brain. “I’m The Inspector.”  
  
“Look on the bright side” the sensible part thought, “I might rescue Penny AND die tonight, an never have to deal with this fractured brain aga-”  
  
“Oh shut up.”  
  
The Inspector tried not to think about the argument he’d just had with himself as he climbed into his car. Before he could close the door, Dr. Trish leaned in and whispered in his ear “Remember, the ten second jets aren’t shielded yet, so they’ll go offline if you use the HERF gun in the car, or your left arm.”  
  
“Right” he said. The showboat reminded him of the crush he’d had on her for years. The sensible part countered that while he still HAD a penis, it was currently behind armor plating and the hydraulics were not yet connected. “But when they ARE reconnected, it’ll be Trish doing it! She’s a scientist, she’ll want to test her handiwork.” The Inspector closed his eyes and cleared his head, fusing the parts of his mind back together. “Thank you” he said to Dr. Trish.”  
  
“It’ll take at least 30 seconds for it to reboot.”  
  
“Thank you,” he said. “The ten second thigh jets will go down for 30 seconds if I use the HERF gun.”  
  
Dr. Trish planted a kiss on his cheek. “Good luck,” she said.  
  
“One last question,” The Inspector said.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Is ‘Trish’ your last name, or your first name? I’ve known you for three years but-”  
  
“It’s my last name,” she said.  
  
“What’s your first name?”  
  
“Classified.”  
  
“Well,” The Inspector said as he revved the engine, “I’ll see you in a few hours Doctor Classified Trish.”  
  
“Good!” she laughed. “I’ll tell you my middle name when you get back!”  
  
Meanwhile, the home of General Quimby looked like a scene of chaos, with people running in every conceivable direction, talking to each other, on phones, to video monitors and assorted communication devices of a classified nature. One man yelped as someone stepped on his foot. The person who had trod upon him barked back, “It’s your own damn fault for having them hide your phone in your shoe. Who wants to take off their shoe to get a classified...” Their voice trailed off as they walked away.  
  
“What have we got?” General Quimby barked at one of his Sergeants. Quimby was pulling a bath robe over his pajamas. “What’s the alarm about?”  
  
“Sir, we’ve detected the girl’s medical bracelet sir.”  
  
Hope welled up in Quimby’s heart for the first time in days. “Where? Is she alive?”  
  
The Sergeant handed him a tablet display. Quimby took a few moments to parse what he was reading.  “She’s still alive.”  
  
“Looks like it sir.”  
  
“I’m surprised they didn’t take her further,” he said, mostly to himself. To the sergeant he said, “Coordinate with local law enforcement. Wake Judge Riedner. Get him started on search warrants. The local police have probable cause thanks to this,” He waved the tablet in the air, “But I want every ‘T’ crossed we can manage. How soon can we move out in force?”  
  
“I just heard from the lab. They’ve already sent out The Inspector.”  
  
“The what?”  
  
“That’s what they’re calling Don. He used to be a cop, so they call him ‘The Inspector.’”  
  
“How the Hell did they even know Penny was found?”  
  
“It’s their medical alert system sir. They built the system that told us.”  
  
General Quimby tensed. Was the reborn man, “The Inspector” ready? He had his doubts.

# First Wave

The Inspector gunned the engine, sirens blaring. As he drove surveillance information streamed to one of his subconscious data feeds. He’d grown used to the sensation quickly. It felt like remembering something you’d forgotten at the exact moment you needed to remember it, but it was new information streaming in, not memories.  
  
Penny was on the roof of an old warehouse. The site had probably been chosen because of the opening roof. It offered a dramatic, dangerous venue, a way for Dr. Claw to offer Penny in a way that appealed to his flair for theatrics. The Inspector's two minds were working together, the seriousness of the situation itself suppressing the showboating and childishness of the more chaotic mind. Everything was focused on situation analysis and planning. It was, of course, a trap. The problem was, the spikes were very well hidden, and had to be anticipated.  
  
Ten minutes later, Penny saw the rescue operation she expected to see. The sound of low power jets split the air and a prototype search and rescue vehicle rose into view. It was the amphibious flying car, and absurd beast that was too difficult to maintain to go into production. It flew over her head, trailing a series of hooks, several of which snagged the bars of her cage. She heard, and felt, a series of detonations below her, and the cage dropped, suddenly supported not by the column of the elevator below, but the chains on the vehicle above.  
  
“This is the trap,” Penny thought, “A trick to draw my uncle into the building.”  
  
The flying car was sinking, the weight of the concrete based cage too much for it to simply fly away. She heard jets below her. Dr. Claw’s cyborgs were coming.  
  
She looked up, and she saw her uncle leap out of the car. For a terrifying moment she thought he was going to plunge past her into the depths below, but he was caught short by a rappelling rope, hooked into a harness integrated into his reworked torso. He swung down and grabbed the bars of her cage. He smiled at her, a reassuring smile, one she’d seen before. It was the way he smiled just before doing something dangerous, daring and absolutely necessary. He kicked away and he pointed behind her. She turned, and saw her shadow cast by a flash of light, a burst of very welcome warmth heating her back. When she turned back one of the bars were gone, presumably cut by lumps of thermite her uncle must have applied.  
  
He swung back to the hole he had cut, and tossed something inside. She scrambled to grab it, and found a jumpsuit, which she pulled on quickly, and a solid foam fuel jet pack. She pulled that on too, buckling its five point harness securely. Once both were on, she ran to the missing bar and grabbed her uncle’s hand, just as the first shots from the cyborgs’ weapons cut into the flying car. She activated the jet pack and she and her uncle leapt into the night. The pack didn’t have enough burn time to fly back out, but it should have enough to land instead of crash.  
  
A barrage of weapon fire hit the car. Despite its armor it quickly crumbled and fell to the ground, landing with a tearing crash on top of the now twisted remains of the cage and its elevator. Penny and her uncle landed softly nearby. Five of Dr Claw’s cyborgs surrounded them.  
  
“You’re the real target,” she said. “They want your head. I don’t think they care if they take you alive.”  
  
The Inspector raised his left arm and aimed it at one of his opponents. Penny knew it had to be the HERF gun, the directional Electromagnetic Pulse weapon capable of disabling electronics. To Penny’s surprise, the entire suit of armor crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The massive circuit array, directly behind the head of each wired-in cyborg, was not shielded against a low power EMP.  
  
“You’ve GOT to be kidding me,” Penny said. Before she finished the sentence The Inspector had fired the HERF gun three more times, leaving only one cyborg still standing.  
  
“Son of a bitch,” the man said, realizing the arm was now aimed at him. He tensed, bracing, but when no shot came he smirked. “Out of ammo, eh? I’m not.” He raised his own arm as a small machine gun emerged from a compartment in its side. Before he could point it at the escaping prisoner and her would-be rescuer, the clear portion of his helmet was spiderwebbed by an impact. Startled, he looked at the brown gloved hand that was now brushing his nose. The attacker had managed to punch through the bulletproof layer from 10 feet away. The tip of the ring finger folded back and a small barrel emerged. He gulped. A jet of bubbles emerged from the barrel. He was startled by the absurdity of what he was seeing. The incredulity lasted only a split second. When the soap hit his eyes he yelled in pain, squeezing his eyes shut in defense. There was a grinding noise and he felt a rush of air as the hand was pulled from his helmet. He collapsed to his knees and only dimly registered the sound of retreating footsteps.  
  
They ran quickly, seeking a path through the warehouse. The massive, empty space Penny has thought she was in has been an illusion created by her elevated position above the ramble of parts, rows of equipment and hulks of half finished or discarded hardware. Penny recognized some of her family’s own gear, and saw other pieces that looked like they were R&D materials from competing laboratories. At one point she saw something that looked disturbingly like a combination of an old fashioned diving bell and an Iron Maiden. She could hear the heavy thud of other cyborgs pursuing them. She could see now that flying out would be impossible. The moment they were above the level of the debris they’d be spotted. The roof peaked at the point where it opened up, so they would have a long trip before they reached the opening. For the moment, stealth and evasion were their best bets.  
  
They turned a corner and saw a long, well lit corridor. Half way down was a massive cyborg, nearly twice the height of a normal man. He turned when he saw them, and a loud, mechanical laugh filled the corridor. He raised an arm and fired a rocket in their direction. Penny and The Inspector both swore and ran in opposite directions, each diving for cover around nearby corners. The rocket detonated, and Penny was lifted into the air by the impact. She was thrown against a metal shelf, and collapsed onto the ground, scorched and dazed, but untouched by shrapnel. She heard the thudding footsteps of the cyborg. “Is your coat made of kevlar? Is your new skin made of body armor?” he taunted. “I hope so. It’ll make crippling you more fun.”  
  
Penny lay still for a moment, hoping the cyborg would pass her by. She felt a pang of guilt for wishing this beast on her uncle, but she reminded herself that he’d been rebuilt with battle in mind, and that he was in a far better position to survive a fight than she was.  
  
A fight. Why DID the first five have such a stupid weakness? Were they castaways for show? Was their only purpose to test her uncle’s abilities? Could Claw really have been short sighted enough to put the drama of a human head wired into circuits behind it ahead of simple battle readiness?  
  
Penny took a deep, slow breath trying to clear her head and focus. She listened. The sounds of pursuit seemed to be moving away from her. She could hear the steps of two foot styles. One was metal, grinding and scraping loudly against the concrete floor of the warehouse. Another was padded by something, possibly rubber. It was still heavy and obvious, but it didn’t sound like it was gouging out the surface upon which it walked. That padding would reduce wear and tear on the cyborgs, as well as any facility that housed them. The first kind however would be more dramatic, more terrifying to see approaching as they kicked up a hail of sparks. Penny wondered which foot Dr Claw considered the more advanced. Then she heard something else. Barking. The familiar barking of, “Brain?” she said softly.  
  
Penny gingerly extracted herself from the collapsed shelf and followed the sound of barking. It took a few minutes but she eventually found an area scattered with half finished equipment that stank of dog feces. She found Brain in a wire dog crate barely larger than he was. She saw from the food and water that they’d been providing for Brian the same way they’d been providing for her, enough to keep one alive, but not enough to keep one healthy. She ran up to the crate and whispered, “Brain, Brain, it’s me, Penny.” Brain paused in his barking, looked at her, and then resumed barking, this time looking frantically in every direction. Penny saw a lock on the crate, and began looking around for a key. Not seeing one she began looking for something she could use to craft a lockpick. There were enough stiff wire and metal slivers lying around for her figure out a way to open the lock on Brain’s crate. As she plied the lock with her improvised lock picks she fought back the memory of one of the few arguments she’d seen her parents have. It was about her lock picking, a hobby they’d encouraged both for the fun of it, and to hone her fine motor skills and understanding of mechanical devices.  Her father had taught her how to make and use a “bump” key, and her mother had been incensed, insisting it was a sorry cheat, not an effective technique unless one happened to have just the right bump key. Penny began to repeat a profanity over and over as she worked, the vulgarity becoming a mantra to fight back the memory of her parents. When the lock popped open she let out a gasp and said, “I guess Mom was right.”  
  
She expected Brain to bound out when she swung open the door, but instead he pounced on her and pulled her into the cage, covering her with his body as he continued barking, pausing only to pull the door closed with his mouth. She was confused at first, but then she heard what Brain’s more sensitive ears must have picked up, the “Thud,” “Thud,” “Thud” of a cyborg. Penny dare not move, not even look up during the next few minutes. She heard the cyborg yell “Shut up you stupid mutt!” Brain whimpered and cowered, now silent. “That’s better,” The cyborg said. Then she heard the cyborg continue, now apparently moving away. She reached out and patted Brain’s paw. “Good boy” she whispered.  
  
They got out of the crate. Penny looked around again. There had to be some kind of order to the warehouse, and if there was, it was possible that anything they’d taken from her that they weren't experimenting on had been kept with Brain. She’d hoped for her computer or some kind of communication device but came up empty. She and Brain began running, desperately seeking a way out. It was during this retreat that the entire building was wracked by the shockwave of an explosion elsewhere in the structure. Dust rained down from the ceiling and she heard the tearing metallic keen of shelves collapsing throughout the warehouse. She covered her ears against the sound. The interior wall beside her crumbled and in the distance she saw something that nearly brought a tear to her eyes. It was a Russian made Chemical Vapor Deposition chamber, the kind used for making artificial diamonds. It was half dismantled, exposing the glorious, beautiful, industrial microwave magnetron. “Thank you God” she said as she ran recklessly towards the apparatus. “Come to Mamma.”  
  
What she found was not a lone device, but an entire graveyard of microwave hardware. Industrial, military even consumer grade. The vulnerability of the early cyborgs was even more perplexing. Penny put the thought from her mind. Her only chance at getting out was a weapon, and her best bet was to scavenge a magnetron from one of the gutted pieces of hardware, improvise a power source and.. What? Blast her way out? Better to die fighting.

# The Inspector’s Battle

  
The rocket that had separated The Inspector and Penny had thrown The Inspector head first into a brick wall. It took longer for him to register that he wasn’t actually injured by this than it took to stand up and face his attacker.  
  
“Is your coat made of kevlar? Is your new skin made of body armor?” the cyborg taunted. “I hope so. It’ll make crippling you more fun.”  
  
“You have to catch me first!” he replied, before crouching and activating the lower leg pistons, propelling himself 10 feet into the air and over the shelving behind him. The extended legs collapsed again when he landed, absorbing the bulk of the impact. This also partially recharged the air canisters that powered the jumps. Unfortunately it took another 12 seconds for the compressor to finish the job.  
  
“I saw him!” He heard a voice yell.  
  
“THIS is why we were keeping on the ground,” he thought as he began running.  
  
More cyborgs were coming into view, briefly glimpsed as he ran down the aisles, jumping over one whenever merely running wasn’t enough. He was deliberately making as much noise as he could, doing his best to draw attention to himself and away from Penny. He found himself wishing the floor was a little more even and not cluttered with so much debri. He wanted to deploy the roller skates that were built into his shoes. This would give him an advantage in maneuverability and surprise but as it was it would only guarantee he would end up flat on his face.  
  
“Get his legs!” he heard one voice cry.  
  
He jumped and landed, finding himself face to face with a wide, solid cyborg. He could hear another barrelling up behind him. The cyborg opened his arms wide. “I hug you to death leedle man.”  
  
The Inspector raised his left arm, the brown glove at the end was already a battered mess. He made a fist and pointed it at the cyborg’s face. A sharp “PAFF” punched the air, and the hand, on the extending end of a metal coil, shot through the air and smashed through the dome of the cyborg’s helmet. This cyborg reacted faster than the last one, successfully grabbing the hand and yanking it out. He pulled and started winding the metal coil around his own arm.  
  
“You’re mine now! Da!”  
  
“Is that a FAKE, Russian accent?”  
  
The cyborg yelled with rage.  
  
“I’m gonna cook em!” screamed the cyborg approaching from the rear. Gadget turned and saw a jet of flame screaming towards him. He hit the ground, but his left arm was still tethered to the squat cyborg. The arm, and the cyborg’s face, were caught by the flamethrower’s blast.  
  
The Inspector activated the explosive disconnect at the base of the cable, freeing him from the squat cyborg. He pulled his arm out of the flame and activated the partially charged leg pistons. He didn't quite clear the shelving with the jump, but he was able to grab a supporting post with his remaining hand and fling himself over the rest of the way. A blast of flame followed him. He landed heavily on the other side. Fortunately this aisle was devoid of attackers, at least for the moment. He looked up and saw the top of the shelving was already on fire. He bent at the knees , grabbed the base of the metal shelf and lifted, tipping the industrial metal shelving onto the cyborg with the flamethrower.  
  
He ran, and kept running. He turned back towards the center of the warehouse, towards the remains of his destroyed car and the still open roof. If he could get to the car’s battery he could get another three or four shots out of the HERF gun. While the lower half of his left arm was charred to a crisp, the HERF gun was housed in the upper arm. The diagnostics data feeding into his brain told him it was still operational. Unpowered but still operational.  
  
Eventually he reached the car again. The downed cyborgs still lay there, not moving. They’d stopped calling for help. Despite the active pursuit, the path to his car was clear.  
  
“Might as well spring the trap” he thought as he ran towards the vehicle. He grabbed the twisted hood and ripped it away, revealing the engine beneath. The car was a hybrid vehicle, with a bank of batteries used primarily to power the worm drive for underwater movement, a cold war era stealth propulsion system that miniaturized well. Two wires snaked out of his torso, connecting to the main terminals. Power flooded into his own internal capacitors, and the HERF gun began recharging.  
  
He could hear approaching cyborgs. Heavy thuds commingled with ear-splintering metal-on-concrete grinding. He slaved the car’s internal systems to his own, searching for something that was still working. He found a handful of remaining systems and a passenger. He activated the ejector seat. The roof blew off successfully, but the cyborg inside was not ejected, so much as toppled into the back seat. The ejector seat had been designed for three hundred pounds or less. Dr Claw’s cyborg clearly weighed more than that. He was now upside-down, flailing his legs helplessly as he tried to extract himself. He punched and tore at the interior, but it was a heavily armored vehicle. It had taken anti-aircraft missiles to take it down in the first place. It looked like this cyborg couldn’t even get the leverage needed to rip apart the lightly armored seats inside the ruined car.  
  
A few moments later, the approaching cyborgs saw The Inspector rising into the air, lifted by a jet pack. Dr. Claw’s Cyborgs rose from all corners of the warehouse and converged on the flying figure. No one was fring any weapons. The were merely converging.  
  
They were faster than the figure they chased, and soon had it surrounded. The figure however continued on towards the open warehouse roof. One of the cyborgs reached out to grab it, and it detonated.  
  
The car had been equipped with a self-destruct mechanism, a powerful blast capable of incinerating all the proprietary technology aboard. It was a durable bomb, capable of surviving any accident if not primed. It could however be set to detonate on impact, or strapped to a gyroscope controlled escape jet, too slow for escaping pursuit, but stable enough to keep going where you pointed it. The gray trench coat had completed the illusion.  
  
The initial blast destroyed half a dozen cyborgs. Secondary explosions rumbled out, as fuel cells, unstable flamethrowers and a variety of hardware on the ground was set off by heat and shrapnel. When the dust settled a few minutes later, a charred, blackened hulk shifted on the ground, as The Inspector opened the cover of the car’s crash safe, a one man bunker designed to survive the car’s own self-destruct system. He stood up. His trench coat was gone, blasted as part of the decoy. He felt a little naked despite the black jump suit he still wore. The coat had been kevlar lined, and he’d never had a chance to try the inflation modules.  
  
“Well done gadget man,” said a loud, booming voice.  
  
The unity of the Inspector’s mind wobbled, as it split again into the calculating battle veteran, and the unrepentant ID. “Oh, that?” said The Inspector. The childish ID continued, “I’m just getting warmed up. I’m glad you made it to the finale Dr. Claw. I was beginning to think you didn’t have the guts to get personally involved.”  
  
The Inspector heard the jets before he saw them. He looked and the largest cyborg he’d seen that day lowered into view. Unlike the others, which had been an assortment of metallic colors as a result of whatever stolen part they’d been built from, this one was blood red. It was flanked by two more cyborgs. Still on the larger side, but not quite as huge and their master.  
  
“This ends with your head in my lab,” Dr. Claw said. “Surrender and I’ll kill you as soon as I’m done with you. Make me fight any more and I’ll keep you alive just to torture you.”  
  
The Inspector shrugged and said, “I think you were going to torture me either way.”  
  
“You’re made of spare parts gadget man. Bad ideas and failed prototypes. I’m made from the finished product. You’re a pile of test kitchen rejects, and I’m the main course.”  
  
“Well then,” The Inspector said, his arms flung wide, “Eat me.” At that moment he fired the HURF gun in his charred left arm at one of the honor guard cyborgs. The careful aim, disguised by the flippant gesture, was true. He jumped, and while soaring into the air he fired at the other flanking cyborg, taking him down as well. A massive hand grabbed his chest mid-air. It was Dr. Claw. He aimed his HERF gun at Claw’s wired head and fired.  
  
Dr. Claw laughed. “The easiest way to prevent a slave revolt,” he said, “Is to have a countermeasure that will kill all of them, but not you.”  
  
His laugh was cut short when The Inspector kicked his chest. Instead of a glancing blow however, his foot seemed to stick. Claw pulled him away, and saw half an ice skate blade sticking out of the bottom of his foot. He laughed. “Nicked a seam in my armor, did you?”  
  
He felt a sudden impact and saw that his prisoner’s right hand was missing, a metal cable extending outside his field of vision. Dr. Claw started cycling through his external cameras, looking for an angle on what his prisoner was doing, when suddenly a series of errors and alerts started screaming across his HUD.  
  
“You’d be amazed how much damage soapy water can do in the right place.” The prisoner kicked with explosive force and Dr. Claw was thrown back, losing his grip.  
  
“Can you catch the Gadget man?” he heard a voice taunt. The Inspector was flying away, lifted not by jets but by a helicopter propellor. Dr. Claw roared with rage and gave pursuit, but his control systems weren’t responding reliably.  
  
“Oh, wait, my bad,” The Inspector taunted again. “My right hand had the acid,  not the soap!”

# The Timely Cavalry

  
If there had been any doubt about which building they were heading towards, it was erased by the massive fireball that emerged from one, accompanied by a catastrophic sound. There were several large warehouses and industrial buildings in the area, all derelict and awaiting someone to put them to use. It was unlikely anyone would put THAT one to use now. Just before the strike force reached the warehouse, two figures flew out of the smoking hole. One was using what looked like a helicopter coming out of his back. The other, substantially larger one, was using jets that were belching flame and sparks. For a moment it seemed the jet propelled figure would catch up, but he faltered and fell slightly, before rising again to pursue the smaller figure.  
  
There were six teams supported by four surveillance drones. Two teams for the office entrances, and four more for the multiple loading docks. Most teams encountered no resistance. Eerie, smoking, sometimes glowing equipment scattered the warehouse. Navigation was difficult because of a mass of twisted industrial shelving that had collapsed all around. Everyone was on edge though, because towards one side of the warehouse there was a battle. Belches of flame were visible through the wreckage of the warehouse. Gunfire and screams could be heard.  
  
Teams two and three reached the battle simultaneously, each from a different side. They saw four cyborgs flying through the air, strafing the ground with machine gun fire. They were all screaming, and despite their position seemed terrified. Several more littered the ground, most unmoving, some still moaning or calling for help.  
  
“Die you little bitch DIE!” one yelled.  
  
A humming noise filled the air, and one of the flying cyborgs dropped to the ground, screaming as he fell. The remaining three cyborgs converged on the source of the humming noise. Two of them fired rockets.  
  
Team two’s sergeant felt a tap on his shoulder. One of his men was motioning to their left. He looked, and saw a figure so covered in filth and grease that there was no way to know what they were wearing. The person was holding some kind of gun in one hand, more metal coils and wire than a barrel. Behind her was a dog, nearly as filthy as she. It was wearing a harness of some kind, and was carrying two large objects. Based on their size, and the wires running from the burden to the person’s weapon, the Sergeant assumed they were probably batteries.  
  
The cyborgs weren’t attacking anywhere near the figure however. Their attention was directed elsewhere. A voice chirped over his headset.  
  
“Noisemakers. They’re shooting at noisemakers.”  
  
The noisemakers would go off at what seemed like random intervals. Whenever one did, the figure would arm the bizarre weapon and pull a lever on the side, the most absurd trigger the Sergeant had ever seen on a weapon. A cyborg would drop, and the noisemaker would be obliterated.  
  
Soon there were two cyborgs left, both on the ground, their fuel exhausted. They were back to back, pointing their guns in opposite directions.  
  
The sergeant spoke. “Surrender now, or the young lady will finish you off too.”  
  
“Who the hell are you?”  
  
He never heard the answer. Both of them dropped. The figure spoke. “I’m Penny, and if you’re who I hope you are, I believe you’re here to rescue me.”

# A Brief Flight

  
“Gadget Man?” his ID said to his sensible mind. “Well, it’s better than ‘The Inspector.’ That’s so stuffy.”  
  
“Can we talk about this later?” his sensible mind said.  
  
“We have time. He can’t seem to catch us, and the higher we go the worse he looks. I don’t think he has his own oxygen supply. What kind of an idiot has a jet powered conveyance without an oxygen supply?”  
  
“A femur made out of an armored Oxygen tank isn’t much of a supply.”  
  
“Seems to be enough. I don’t think he has nitrogen scrubbers to avoid the bends either. He looks pretty miserable.”  
  
“This is a stalemate. We’re running out of oxygen and battery power.” We need to act.  
  
The Inspector positioned himself above his pursuer, cut the propellor, and dropped, hitting the dome of Dr. Claw’s helmet with one and a half ice skating blades. It cracked and a fissure formed, but it did not rupture.  
  
“Nope, not pressurized.” He flew off again before Dr. Claw could make another grab.  
  
Dr. Claw raised his arm, and The Inspector laughed. “You’re out of ammo, remember? That’s the problem with fully automatic fire. It eats ammo.”  
  
“You win this round Gadget man, but I still have everything I’ve reverse engineered. I’ll be back, and next time, I’ll get you.” Dr. Claw’s jets cut out and he dropped towards the ground. The Inspector cut his rotors and dropped as well, determined to not let Claw escape. When he was in reach Claw lashed out and grabbed The Inspector by the legs. He smiled the half smile his ruined face was capable of. “Mine!” He yelled in triumph.  
  
The Inspector punched through the remaining plastic of Claw’s dome, sending shards scattering into the air. He then punched Claw in the face, not with his remaining hand, but with the stump of his left arm. Once he made contact, he fired the HERF gun. Claw’s eyes went wide with terror as all his controls cut out.  
  
“I’ll take you with me Gadget-man.”  
  
They fell for half a minute, and while they plummeted to Earth, both halves of the Inspector's mind thought. The Inspector and the Gadget man, two minds, formerly one, but still one body. Neither one is going anywhere, but here we are. We need a name that defines us, tells the world our duality. Man and machine, madman and stable soldier. Rock and rock-head.”  
  
“That’s INSPECTOR Gadget to you” he said. He fired the jump jets in the lower halves of both legs, blasting open the grip of Dr. Claw’s robot body. They drifted apart, and Inspector Gadget smiled, spun up his helicopter blades and drifted away, close enough to keep tabs on Claw’s decent, but far too far away to be grabbed again.

# Epilogue

  
“How’s your Mother doing?” General Quimby asked.  
  
“Still confined to the faraday cage,” Penny said. “Her nanite infection was worse, so it’s taking longer for the hunter nanites to clean them up. Any word on how my other hunch is playing out?”  
  
“Need to know basis I’m afraid.”  
  
“Awww, but I need to know who it’s safe to do business with.”  
  
“Nonsense, you have your OWN EM shielding tech. You don’t need to buy it from someone else.”  
  
“I noticed a few Russian suppliers of HREF guns are MIA.”  
  
“Yeah, well, the russian government isn’t being very subtle.”  
  
“It wasn’t just a technology demo you know. It wasn’t just about kicking war up a notch.”  
  
“I know. Now, can we focus on Inspector Gadget’s refits?”  
  
“If you tell me where Dr. Claw went after you apprehended him.”  
  
“Oh come on, we’ve been through this.”  
  
“Inspector Gadget SAW the jets that fired just before he landed. He was STILL breathing when you cut off the robot arms and hauled him away.”  
  
“Shouldn’t your parents be back in charge now? They were never as nosy as you are.”  
  
“Oh, it’s their lab, but I’m in charge of the Inspector Gadget project.”  
  
Penny got up and put on the “Peril Sensitive Sunglasses” her father had finally finished. The remote HUD to her book computer fired up, adding an overlay to her vision. Her entire field of vision was shielded when she wore them. No blinking lights could give her a seizure now.  
  
When she stood, Brain rose as well, and General Quimby could have sworn the dog gave him a dismissive “sniff” before turning to follow Penny.  
  
General Quimby sighed. He had to tell her. If for no other reason than to get her to authorize Inspector Gadget’s involvement.  
  
“Dr. Claw has escaped,” he said. “Half a dozen of his cyborgs ripped the detention center in half. We’ve kept it quiet, but Dr. Claw just got an influx of dangerous recruits who really, really hate the US.”  
  
Penny stopped. “Are you ready to give Inspector Gadget a full briefing?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“His bronchial toxins scrubbers are being upgraded to handle ricin. He’ll be available in an hour. Anything you need to tell me before the briefing?”  
  
Quimby opened his briefcase and handed her a file folder. Inside was a piece of paper with the words, “Next time Gadget, next time.”


End file.
